Voicemail systems allow a caller to leave a voice message if the desired recipient is unavailable. Traditional voicemail systems (referred to herein as plain old voicemail or POVM) allow a subscriber to place a call to a voicemail system to access messages stored in his or her voicemail box. This is often done through a telephone user interface (TUI) that facilitates interaction between the subscriber and the voicemail system. The TUI provides functions for the subscriber to listen to messages, skip messages, delete messages, and save messages. The TUI can also provide functions for the subscriber to set a voicemail greeting, record a voicemail greeting, record a name, and set/change a password.
With some voicemail systems, a subscriber with multiple voicemail messages is required to listen to, skip, delete, or save each message while reviewing the voicemail box. This is time consuming and can be frustrating for the subscriber in situations where an important message has been deposited, requiring the subscriber to listen to, skip, delete or save each message in search of the important message.
To help reduce the need to search through multiple messages, various improved voicemail systems have been developed that allow messages to be stored based on a priority scheme to increase the efficiency of listening to voicemail messages. Often, these systems use a telephone number of the caller to identify a priority for a message and position the voicemail messages in order based on the assigned priorities. When the recipient accesses the voicemail system to acquire voicemail messages, the recipient is presented with each voicemail message in order of the priority or importance to the recipient. Accordingly, the recipient is must listen to and/or skip through multiple voicemail messages to find an important message. However, an important message can be easily relegated to a position of low importance if the subscriber previously has not set the priority for the caller. In this system, the priority for an incoming voicemail message is determined directly by the telephone number associated with the caller.
The aforementioned systems fail to allow a subscriber to select the exact voicemail message the subscriber would like to hear. Furthermore, the aforementioned systems require the use of a TUI to access the voicemail system to listen to voicemail messages and manage a voicemail account. These systems merely notify a subscriber of a pending voicemail message with a message waiting indicator (MWI) and require that the subscriber access the voicemail system to retrieve the pending message(s). Thus, it is desirable to create new enhanced voicemail systems and novel methods for providing secure visual voicemail (VVM) services.